Just Say Yes: What It’s Like Inside a Bushwick Almost Sex Party

Last night, inside the main room at House of Yes, was a sight that you probably haven’t seen before: Naked men and women, lying on padded bed-like tables and covered with spreads of sumptuous food arranged artistically all over their supine bodies. These human platters were covered in steak, sushi, huge grilled mushrooms, fried quail, and cake—much of which had sauce drizzled all over it. Attendees had been asked to dress in “black tie fetish” (so, put on your best black tie, then remove significant swaths of fabric and add straps), and now hovered around the tables, feasting off the bodies, which appeared to thrill with pleasure each time a bite was removed from their skin. Diners dipped bites of their meals around and between naked legs in order to soak up the provided sauce.

Produced by Abby Hertz at House of Yes, this was LUST—an immersive night of culinary entertainment featuring half-clothed roaming masseuses, shirtless men grilling corn on the cob, a woman calmly bathing in a clawfoot bathtub, buckets upon buckets of self-serve champagne, a soundtrack of sexy lounge music, and all of it infused with a chill-yet-direct message: Say yes.

I went with a friend, and this was a good thing, since I am not typically one to seek out a fetish party, and she helped me feel much more comfortable grabbing pieces of perfectly grilled steak perched on a perfectly formed muscle. I watched her make herself comfortable on provided lounge pillows, plucking fried pieces of quail and various fruits straight off the human platters with a devilish grin. I soon realized that once I dropped my own hangups and just learned to say yes, it became pretty easy to enjoy the bountiful naked splendor of it all. That said, I found myself having a much easier time eating food off naked women. I almost threw up the first time I ate a piece of steak off a man.

As the night wore on, and the complimentary buckets of champagne emptied (and then refilled), people became increasingly comfortable saying yes to… just about everything. To aid the transition to the sexy side, intrepid heroes dressed in and equipped with S&M gear, walked around in an effort to provide party-goers with free-flowing massages. I did not hate this. Once again, my friend played an excellent sex party wing woman and eyed potential masseuses, in order to beckon them over, and…

Listen, I can’t disclose all of what happened last night. The tame version is that it included flogging, large beds with piles of happy bodies, a whirlpool—reserved for people who “earned” the secret code to take a dip inside of it—and interactive performances of hot wax dripping all over naked, writhing bodies. Oh, and obviously, this was 100 percent a sex party, which came as something of a surprise to me. But the beauty of House of Yes is that I showed up, and was suddenly open to so much more than when I typically walk the streets of New York City with my standard Resting Dead Face. At House of Yes, the world was my oyster, and I got to eat it however I wanted, and you can too. Like, really however: slurped out of the shell, on a naked body—however.

When House of Yes hosts its next LUST—or a similar event, like on July 8 when they will host House of Love dance party—I bid you, go. As my gem of a friend so aptly said as she sat in her vintage, sheer black, floor-length negligée and matching robe her great-aunt had gifted her, and popped a quail egg in her mouth, lovingly selected from off of a grinning man’s muscular torso, “New experiences are the spice of life.” She chomped on that egg and continued: “I would hate to die and never have eaten quail off of a beautiful person in a warehouse in Bushwick.”